ACTOR Joe McFadden has lost none of the boy-next-door appeal that made him a favourite of Sunday night TV, maintaining law and order to a swinging 60s soundtrack as PC Joe Mason in Heartbeat or arriving on horseback as dashing Dr Jack Marshall in BBC period drama Cranford.

He is just enjoying a job well done, scaring the pants off the audience in his latest project, Haunting Julia.

He is starring in the first ever UK tour of Alan Ayckbourn’s play about a grieving dad who builds a shrine to his dead daughter and demands to know what happened to the musical prodigy, who died 12 years before in mysterious circumstances.

Co-starring Duncan Preston, Louise Kempton and Richard O’Callaghan, it’s a haunting study of grief and a chilling, thrilling ghost story to boot.

He said: “There are a couple of really scary moments. I had some actor pals in the other night and it terrified them, which is brilliant because they are used to the goings on of the theatre and are usually hardened cynics.

“There are a couple of moments that, even if you are not easily scared, will get you, I’m sure.

“When I first read it, I thought it was just a ghost story, but the more you go into it the more you realise it is more about grief and loss.

“I met Alan Ayckbourn the other night and he said he set out to write a ghost story, but ended up writing a play about three men whose lives have been altered and halted by this death. They just can’t get over it.”

For Joe, who grew up on horror films such as the Scream and Final Destination series, it is a bit of a labour of love, as is appearing in stage.

The Glasgow-born star, now 36, has been acting since he was a kid but never went to drama school, and learned on the job.

He started early, making his Scottish rites of passage appearance in Taggart at just 12, before going on to a six-year stint as Gary McDonald in Take the High Road from the age of 15.

He’s been on an upward trajectory ever since, starring as Prentice McHoan in celebrated drama The Crow Road, based on the Iain Banks novel of the same name, and playing Alan Maclean in Gilles Mackinnon’s 1996 coming of age film Small Faces, set against the backdrop of 1960s Glasgow.

His other screen credits have included Bumping the Odds, The Law, The Glass, Sparkhouse, Raphael and Sex, Chips & Rock ’n’ Roll on TV, and Dad Savage and The Trouble with Men and Women on film, holding his own with big hitters including John Thaw and Sir Patrick Stewart.

He said: “I do feel I’ve been lucky to have worked with those people because they bring the best out of you.”

Joe McFadden in Haunting Julia

His stage work has been equally impressive, from playing Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to a stint as Aladdin to Sir Ian McKellen’s Widow Twankey in panto at the Old Vic.

It’s these roles that mean the most to him, as they are where he learned he really could act.

He said: “For a long time you’re the guy who did telly. It was a challenge because, having not gone to drama school, I always thought everyone must have learned this secret to acting that I hadn’t. That got taken away when I started doing theatre.

“I thought not so much that I know what I am doing, but perhaps everyone else doesn’t know what they are doing just as much as I don’t.

“I developed a real interest and enjoyment in doing it, from Entertaining Mr Sloane at Theatre Clywd then going into the West End for a year when I did Rent. That was a big job and being in the West End in a musical was a big thing for me.”

His beloved stage work has been his focus since Heartbeat was axed by ITV after 18 years. He popped up in a recurring role in Casualty, but in recent years has been content to tread the boards.

He has enjoyed some plum parts, not least a lead role in The Missing, The National Theatre of Scotland’s play inspired by author Andrew O’Hagan’s book retracing the final footsteps of a collection of missing people.

There he played a young journalist who, having been assigned to write about serial killers Fred and Rose West, started to think beyond the headlines about those the victims left behind. It is a role, which affected him deeply.

He said: “I still wonder about those people’s lives. There was a responsibility on us to get the story right, to tell it the right way and be accurate.

“It was real lives and people were coming to see the show who Andrew had written about, whose lives were affected by losing a loved one.

“I do still think of those families and I check with Andrew every now and again to see if there have been any developments, but there haven’t.

“You try not to let it get under your skin too much, because at the end of the day you have to move on to the next project, but that was one of the more affecting of the plays I did because it was all true – all real situations and real interviews.”

He came to Haunting Julia, which is just about to arrive in Edinburgh and will allow him to catch up with his family in Glasgow, direct from an acclaimed production of Torch Song Trilogy at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London.

Some of his co-stars from Small Faces have found success in America, notably Grey’s Anatomy star Kevin McKidd and Laura Fraser, who is in Breaking Bad. But he is content and has no plans to cross the Atlantic to chase stardom.

He said: “Never say never, but I have friends out there and it seems like hard graft going out there and starting again doing the rounds of studios.

“I feel things are going well for me over here and I think I’d be mad to turn my back on it. When I’m getting work I enjoy and I’m proud of, I think I’d be daft to pack it in and go out there and start again.

“That’s not to say I won’t in a couple of years if the work dries up here, but in the meantime I'm more than happy to be here doing what I’m doing.

“I think I realised a few years ago that I am perhaps not going to be a movie star. I approach any script regardless of what it is on its merits.

“I don’t mind if it is a film or TV or stage – if it is a good script and I feel I can do something interesting with it, that’ll make me want to do it.

“It just happens that it is for a smaller audience, but I have just as good a time doing it as I would do if it was going out to six million viewers.

“I just want to do good work. I really do enjoy it and something like this, Haunting Julia. It’s really good fun, getting to travel round the country with a play we are all very proud of.”